Thursday, April 26, 2007

Should Creationist Students Be Allowed into College?

High school students who are taught creationism instead of evolutionary theory lack the critical thinking skills that are necessary for college, according to Stanford President Emeritus Donald Kennedy.

That sounds like something sensible although I'm not sure the correlation is a cause and effect relationship. Perhaps the lack of critical thinking skills and the teaching of creationism have a deeper cause?

I don't think that a student should be banned from college just because they're a creationist but I do think they need to demonstrate that they're ready for college. The ideal situation would be to have standardized entrance exams. The SAT's don't count.

Kennedy is currently serving as an expert witness for the University of California Regents, who are being sued by a group of Christian schools, students and parents for refusing to allow high school courses taught with creationist textbooks to fulfill the laboratory science requirement for UC admission. After reading several creationist biology texts, Kennedy said he found "few instances in which students are being introduced to science as a process—that is, the way in which scientists work or carry out experiments, or the way in which they analyze and interpret the results of their investigations."

Kennedy said that the textbooks use "ridicule and inappropriately drawn metaphors" concerning evolution to discourage students from formulating independent opinions. "Even with respect to the hypothesis that dominates them—namely, that biological complexity and organic diversity are the result of special creation—critical thinking is absent," he added.

I don't see why a college or university should be obliged to accept a creationist biology course as a legitimate science course.

20 comments:

I don't see why a college or university should be obliged to accept a creationist biology course as a legitimate science course.

Larry, Larry, Larry.... Have you learned nothing about Framing????

Don't you understand????

If you start telling people that their religious beliefs (you know, the ones that result in them ending up in these bogus courses to begin with) are wrong, then you will be unable to communicate your science effectively. You HAVE to let these students into college. In fact, you have to kiss their asses.

And, if you don't accept this position, my new friends Matt and Chris will come over to your site an make you APOLOGIZE.

I don't think they should be kept out of college, quite frankly, if only because it's a risky place for uncritical thinking to continue. Although this is more an example of lateral transfer rather than from high school, we might not have Bart Ehrman were he kept out of a more mainstream collegial atmosphere.

While there should be and might be an introductory course to acquire the lab component, I don't think they ought to be under the gun to accept the creationist biology materials on par. There is something seriously incompatible with science with the likes of winners of the 2001 Fellowship Baptist Science Creation Fair, where at the high school level you get such lovely gems as "Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria" and "Maximal Packing Of Rodentia Kinds: A Feasibility Study" (for Noah's Ark feasibility)

Perhaps the lack of critical thinking skills and the teaching of creationism have a deeper cause?

They're connected, but I'm not sure how to describe the connection. Critical-thinking skills can be boiled down to three simple imperatives: 1) never forget your assumptions; 2) always question whether your assumptions and your data are accurate, and be equally prepared to accept "yes" and "no" as an answer; 3) once you have established a particular statement or datum as reliable, don't question it again unless relevant new data becomes available.

Teachers who teach creationism as science are committing fraud against their students. Students who accept that teaching aren't doing anything wrong ... until they learn there's data that contradicts what their teachers told them. A student could become a brilliant critical thinker and still be a creationist, if all he ever saw was creationist data. And I've met a number of people who were not creationists, yet were as bad at critical thinking as any creationist ever spawned.

I don't see why a college or university should be obliged to accept a creationist biology course as a legitimate science course.

I agree. OTOH, I also don't see any reason why a university or college should automatically deny that a creationist biology course is a science course. If it doesn't teach accurate facts and science-the-process, then it isn't a science course. If it teaches the facts and the process accurately, then it is.

Mind you, I can't offhand come up with a scenario where a creationism course qualifies as science, which itself tells me that it's pretty damned unlikely. But I'm not quite willing to say it's impossible.

I also like the idea of instead of being kept out of college completely, requiring them to take extra intro courses in biology/evolution. I only think this because college is so incredibly important and this will give them the best opportunity they'll probably ever have to see for themselves why their beliefs are ufounded and wrong. Imagine having professors that specialize in converting students from irrational thought to rational thought in this context. That might be fun.

I had a friend in college that hand't taken any foreign language in high school. As part of his acceptance into college he was required to take and pass two semesters of a foreign language during his first year, even if his major didn't require it.

I can see Creationist Science fitting in the same scenario. If the pending student did not take a qualified biology class, then as requirement of acceptance he/she must take and pass a qualifying biology class within a certain timeframe.

There is something seriously incompatible with science with the likes of winners of the 2001 Fellowship Baptist Science Creation Fair,

Objectiveministries.org is a parody site. Check the merchandise links, or the "Anti-Triclavianist" materials. The creator(s) are really good at walking right up to the line of believability.

It's also been noted for years and years on the talk.origins that it's nearly impossible to parody creationists. No matter how insane you try to sound, some creationist will pop up who is honestly and actually worse.

"I don't think they should be kept out of college, quite frankly, if only because it's a risky place for uncritical thinking to continue."

They should be required to either pass an entrance exam or take remedial coursework at unsubsidized (e.g. out-of-state) tuition rates. Why should the taxpayer have to foot the bill for repairing the damage? Let the fanatics see how much it costs up front, and give them some heat on the issue from the non-fanatics who'd rather use their money for better things.

jackd - *laugh* Ouch! I am admittedly embarrassed over my source material there ;) I have got to keep myself up to date on spoofs. Landover Baptist was the last one I saw, but it is to my recollection less subtle :)

Given Greg hanging around here, I could have instead cribbed from his canonical post on the Home Schooling Creationist Fair, but I was looking for a non home-schooling equivalent (which discounts the Twin Cities Home School Fair out as well), not in the least because I'm sure Greg doesn't want another giant home-schooling thread following him around (*grin*), but because these are Christian high schools involved in the suit.

A closer one, which has entries from academies, would be the Creation Discovery Project, though it seems to be on a 9-year-plus hiatus and gives little more than the titles. (I'm embarrassed that it was in my country, though you can't really apologize for everyone ;)

Does anyone know what the "two popular Christian biology textbooks" that are being referred to as inadequate are? Of Pandas and People was virtually itself on trial at Kitzmiller - I'd like to find out what else is out there being pushed as biology, and how far off the beaten track they are.

The question isn't whether they should be admitted to some state college, but whether they should be admitted to one of the nine University of California campuses. There are more qualified students than places, so students needing remedial courses generally need to go somewhere else.

Admit them, get them into fraternities, and teach them to drink. In 2 schools where I was a teaching assistant, I saw many students who had poor science backgrounds and abilities, and I don't think that Creationism had anything to do with it--they were simply very poorly prepared.

It should be noted that the biology class in question was rejected for certification because the textbook used was the abominable Bob Jones biology book. There are three basic requirements that all science classes were required to meet to be considered. One of these three was that science must be taught as an objective endeavor. The Bob Jones book taught that science must be subject to biblical interpretation. The book was clearly in violation of the standard on that point alone. In addition, it contains many errors of fact.

Also, a student taking this class would not be barred from applying. It merely means that it doesn't count as one of the 15 classes students are required to take for the normal method of applying - that is about 50-60% of the classes a normal high school student would take.

Non-science students with creationist backgrounds do struggle in state or other non-religious schools. A friend who teaches a California State University "general education" course on prehistoric life gets lots of non-science students looking for a class without much math to fulfill a science requirement, and every semester about 10-15% are admitted creationists. My friend observes that many "creationists", being gently forced to think about scientific evidence for the first time, start to "get it". Others fight to preserve their creationist outlook, and my friend is sorry to watch the struggle.

He's clear to say that he doesn't care if students believe what he's teaching, as long as they learn it. There are very few creationist students who can manage to learn the material well. There are limits to cognitive dissonance, I suppose.

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Principles of Biochemistry 5th edition

Disclaimer

Some readers of this blog may be under the impression that my personal opinions represent the official position of Canada, the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, the University of Toronto, the Faculty of Medicine, or the Department of Biochemistry. All of these institutions, plus every single one of my colleagues, students, friends, and relatives, want you to know that I do not speak for them. You should also know that they don't speak for me.

Superstition

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerlyseemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.

Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Quotations

I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.

The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.

Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.

The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000
It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma
One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick
There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins
Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.